Crystal Dynamics Announces New Office in Washington State

Crystal Dynamics announced today the opening of a new satellite studio, Crystal Northwest. The expansion team will reside in Bellevue, Washington and has already begun work on projects in technology development.

Crystal Northwest will initially work on the Avengers Project, supporting and helping the Dynamics team. After that, it sounds like Northwest will have their own work to do, with 20-year veterans Chad Queen and James Loe at the helm.

Scot Amos, one of two co-heads of Crystal Dynamics, is very excited about the expansion. “We’re aggressively scaling up our teams and adding a new studio with spectacular talent to deliver the ultimate gaming experiences for our players,” said Amos. “We have assembled a team of industry veterans and leaders in order to create gaming experiences that surpass the expectations of our passionate community.”

Today at Crystal Dynamics, we're proud to announce our expansion with key new hires at our Redwood Shores headquarters and the creation of a new Bellevue, Washington satellite studio: Crystal Northwest™!

Crystal Dynamics has also hired a few new faces for the main studio in Redwood Shores, CA. This is to seemingly bring in as much talent as they can for the upcoming Avengers game. Among them are Vincent Napoli, who recently worked on combat mechanics for the recent God of War, and Ben Wanat, known for his work on the Dead Space franchise — most notably Dead Space 3, where he was Creative Director. Napoli and Wanat will fill the roles of Lead Combat Designer and Creative Director, respectively. David Fifield has also been hired on as Game Director. His background lies at 343 Industries and Raven Software, where he worked on the Halo and Call of Duty series’.

Ron Rosenberg, the other co-head at Crystal Dynamics said, “Our new studio in Bellevue, and the new hires in Redwood Shores, represent our continued commitment to the most ambitious project we’ve ever created,” referencing the Avengers Project. He added, “We’ll keep building on the exciting growth Crystal Dynamics has experienced over the last several years, and are eager to deliver a world-class Avengers experience for fans around the world.”